He turned to writing after suffering "artist's block", and his first books featured paintings of the cars they discussed.
His artwork often had crossovers with his motoring writing, for example, a major series of work created in the late-1980s and early-1990s was painted on second hand car bonnets (hoods).
In his formative art years Chadwick was taught by artists Cliff Whiting, Paul Dibble and Frank Davis.
[1] In the early 1990s he led a group known as the Scarecrow Committee who unsuccessfully campaigned to prevent KFC from bulldozing the Hāwera house of New Zealand author Ronald Hugh Morrieson and replacing it with a fast food outlet.
In 2008 Chadwick set foot in the Hāwera KFC outlet for the first time since the Morrieson house campaign of the early 1990s,at Hāwera, to read a chapter from The Scarecrow by Ronald Hugh Morrieson as part of artist Liz Allens 'One Day Sculpture' art happening.